Why Would Anyone Want to Run for Congress?

• By Shane Goldmacher
• April 19, 2013
• comments

Minutes after President Obama finished this year’s State of the Union address, Rep. Steve Israel slipped off the House floor, pulled out his iPhone, and began to type. In the address field were the names of people scattered across the country whom Israel, the man in charge of helping Democrats try to win back control of the House, most wanted to run for Congress in 2014.

“Did you watch it?” Israel asked them. “In two years, you could actually watch yourself.”

It was a move ripped straight from the playbook of a college football coach, the equivalent of dialing up a blue-chip running back in the middle of the big game just so he can hear the roar of the crowd. Israel, a fast-talking New Yorker in his second cycle atop the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, beams in retelling the tale. “I am a fanatic when it comes to recruiting,” he says, jabbing his fist in punctuation.

Now is the heart of recruitment season, a time when the nation’s top talent scouts fan out from Washington to scour the country’s small towns and big cities for, if not the next undiscovered political star, then at least a ...

Do Good Leaders Sacrifice With Their Employees?

• By Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs
• April 19, 2013
• comments

In the Young Leaders Panel, Government Executive editors pose a question about an issue affecting the federal workforce to a group of emergent leaders outside the federal community. The following responses come from St. Louis Coro™ Fellows Program in Public Affairs class of 2013:

Question: As furloughs begin, several government leaders have announced they will take voluntary pay cuts. In early April, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said he would forfeit part of his pay and President Obama announced he would give 5 percent of his salary (about $16,667 of his $400,000 annual salary) back to the Treasury Department in a show of solidarity with federal employees facing unpaid furloughs. Some say the voluntary cuts shows empathy and support for the oft-vilified federal worker while others say the voluntary cuts don’t amount to much and are merely symbolic—especially for the President, who has an expense account and pays little of his own day-to-day expenses.  When organizations are going through tough times, is it necessary for leaders to sacrifice along with those they lead? How can effective leaders demonstrate commitment to each and every member of a struggling organization without seeming inauthentic?

The following responses come from ...

How To Get Through An Interview for the SES

• By Jackson Nickerson
• April 19, 2013
• comments

Ask EIG is your chance to seek answers to public sector management challenges and conundrums. Submit your questions here.

The purpose of “Ask EIG” is to respond to questions and host conversations about how to improve leadership thinking and, ultimately, capabilities.  Such improvement is all for not if you don’t actually get the job so I especially appreciate today’s question. 

It is not uncommon for senior leaders to use several approaches to winnow applicants down to a small pool.  Phone interviews are one of many hurdles, all of which you have to successfully navigate if you want to end up in the final pool from which a selection will be made. 

With phone interviews, and in particular with a committee on the line, what kinds of questions will be asked?  What will the committee be looking for?  How can you shine through a telephone line and demonstrate that you have the right stuff?

(HAVE A QUESTION? Submit your most pressing management questions below or click here)

First and foremost please know that I have never been on such a hiring committee for SES candidates.  But I have been on hiring committees, and even have run a few, at ...

Why Free Museums Are Bad for Everyone

• By Michael Rushton
• April 19, 2013
• comments

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was recently sued by visitors because its advertised admission prices use the word “recommended” in rather fine print, giving the impression there is no getting around the basic non-concession rate of $25. It’s an odd practice, rarely seen elsewhere, of posting a price but not actually making payment required, and so no wonder it causes confusion to those who rarely visit museums. If this is the policy to be followed, surely it’s best to be as transparent as possible to the visitors about their obligations. That said, much of the resulting debate was not about the voluntary nature of the price, but about the amount.

When it comes to museum prices, how high is too high, especially when, as is especially the case outside America, museums receive generous public subsidy? All museums are different of course, in terms of their collections and their patrons, but here are a few things to consider in why it makes sense for museums to continue charging admission.

First, as options go for being able to enjoy the fine arts, museums are not expensive. Compared to what we pay for opera, classical music, or theatre, that ...

How Donald Duck Made You Pay Your Taxes

• By Mark Micheli
• April 18, 2013
• comments

Monday was Tax Day. If that’s news to you than you should stop reading this immediately. But if, like most of us, you paid your taxes in a timely fashion (or hastily filed for an extension) you probably caught yourself wondering over the last week just where, exactly, did our complex tax system come from?

The income tax has a long, and surprisingly interesting, history. America’s first income tax began to help pay for the Civil War, expiring soon after the war’s end. We took another crack at an income tax with the passage of a flat tax in 1894, which was later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1895.

Persistent when it comes to taxation, we Americans tried again. This time, at the behest of our, uh, widest president (and newest Washington Nationals mascot), William Howard Taft, who wrote to Congress on June 16, 1909 proposing:

That both Houses, by a two-thirds vote, shall propose an amendment to the Constitution conferring the power to levy an income tax upon the National Government without apportionment among the States in proportion to population.

Congress passed the 16^th Amendment the following month and it was ratified by ...